Electromagnetic Interference From Natural Lightning on 4G Communication Links

Abstract

In this study, microwave radiation pulses emitted from natural lightning have been found to interfere with the Fourth Generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE) mobile communication data transmission. Two sets of measurement instruments have been synchronized where lightning electric field sensor together with 4G LTE network were evaluated its performance under two conditions namely fair-weather (four cases) and storm (four lightning cases). The microwave radiation emitted from lightning was directly measured without the use of a mixer and down-convertor to ensure the preservation of information such as the number of pulses and amplitude. A client-server architecture has been set up for data transmission utilizing User Datagram Protocol (UDP) where the packets have been generated by using Internet Performance Working Group Third Version (Iperf3) platform. Under fair-weather conditions, the 4G LTE connection at both the client and server nodes demonstrated stability and experienced minimal impact. On the other hand, natural lightning electromagnetic interference disrupted the 4G LTE communication links. Among the four reported storms, three storms have affected the 4G LTE data transmission. The first and fourth storms resulted in a complete connection drop to zero, lasting for 4 minutes and 2 seconds and for 44 seconds, respectively. The observation of hundreds microwave radiation pulses, each characterized by individual oscillating features suggests a potential disruption to packet transmission. Moreover, negative could-to-ground (-CG) and intra-cloud (IC) lightning flashes have been identified as the primary sources of interference to the 4G LTE data transmission. This information could be useful for future studies and for developers working on improving the reliability and performance of 4G LTE networks, particularly in areas prone to thunderstorms.